(My) Time of Death

[Cellar Door]

A moment in life (when)
I am a passerby
the transience of time,
it rivals mortality

A fleeting spectrum each
and every grain of sand (and)
The months go faster than days;
eternity's in an hour

(But) Death comes in the form of frost for each
and every flower
So the wind sings her children to sleep
Elastic time slows
Sands begin to crawl

And I, I wish to be sung to with wind
all the rest of my days

[blp]

The wistful beauty of this is just a little let down by the death-of-a-flower cliché, especially since frost isn't the only way flowers die. Other than that, I think a poem like this depends on being very crafted, feeling it has no parts extraneous or out of place, and there are other (tiny) things that don't sit right just yet. 'it' at the beginning of L4 is extraneous, not that just taking it out is necessarily the solution. Not sure what the brackets are doing, though they work with 'when'. The sand references keep appearing in all this and seeming very anomalous, especially the second. I don't know why they begin to crawl just there. If it's sand in an hourglass, as time musings suggest, do sands in an hourglass crawl? Anyway, sands in an hourglass as picture of time - definite cliché.

I like the 'months go by faster than days'. Pretty sure 'eternity's' should actually be 'eternities'.

Some words from Lorine Niedecker (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/poems.html) to leave you with:



Poet's Work

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoff
from this
condensery

and


...But what vitality! The women hold jobs--
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

[Cellar Door]

Thank you for a wonderful critique, blp! As always, (for me, anyway) you were helpful, concise, and flattering. One small thing, though- i did mean "eternity's", as in "eternity is in an hour" , not that there are several eternities existing in an hour, although, that gives me something to think about doesn't it...

Thank you for introducing me to the works of Lorine Niedecker. I will definitely check her out... Thanks again! :)

[blp]

Glad to, CD.